Mashable

High-Impact Innovation

Four game-changing technologies that exist today

High-Impact Innovation

Four game-changing technologies that exist today

By Eli Epstein

Presented by the Infiniti Q50

Presented By the Infiniti Q50

There’s you. Then there’s you with tech that helps make you a better you.

Robots that look like large dogs, balloons with LTE floating in the stratosphere, 3D printers that produce living cells and a machine that turns your sewage into drinking water -- these are not innovations predicted to arrive 20 years from now.

Rather, they exist today, and they're beginning to have a profound impact on science, medicine and technology.

Just what might a canine-looking robot or an Internet balloon do for the world?

Find out below how scientists and engineers invented these four incredible pieces of technology and why they believe they'll help millions of people live better, healthier lives.

3D-printed biological tissue

What’s the most useful object a 3D printer can create? A guitar? Maybe a pair of shoes?

How about biological tissue or blood vessels that could lead to artificial organs and cyborg parts?

Whereas early 3D printers used mostly plastic and metal alloys, scientists today are mixing and matching a variety of materials, some of them living.

Last year, for instance, Jennifer A. Lewis, a materials scientist at Harvard University, printed biological tissue with a vascular network that helps keep cells alive after they leave the printer.

To do so, Lewis and her research team designed a printer that can accurately produce structures with components as small as one micrometer, the MIT Technology Review reports.

All the inks used in Lewis' lab are engineered to keep their form before, during and after the printing process, where they're subjected to different pressures and exposed to living and non-living materials.

This fluoresence image shows a four-layer lattice printed by sequentially depositing four PDMS inks, each dyed with a different fluorophore.

Scientists are still a ways away from printing a living organ, but Lewis' team’s ability to print complex tissue with intact vascular systems is a vital building block in the process.

Eventually, the medical community hopes, bioprinted tissues will be able to expedite drug testing -- which can take decades -- and replace damaged organs.

"By being able to directly print functional tissue, one could have a much more substantive approach to pharmaceutical drug screening, as well as tissue engineering," Lewis told C&EN.

Four-legged robots

What most of us don't yet know — and might not be all that comfortable to learn — is that scientists and engineers are creating robots so advanced that they're able to perform tasks that we're not able to, or don't dare to because of the physical risk involved.

Don't worry — these robots aren’t being to destroy humans or make us redundant. Instead, they're being designed to help us.

Such is the case of Boston Dynamics' Spot, a 160-pound, four-legged robot that looks similar to a dog. Spot won't lie down for naps or ask for belly rubs, however.

Instead, Spot could eventually be used for search and rescue or disaster relief thanks to its hydraulic legs, head sensors and self-correcting balance that allows it to recover from missteps and sense obstacles.

Past wheeled robots' designs were unable to navigate non-flat terrain, so it's promising to watch Spot run on flat ground and hills and recover from some good-humored kicks from BD's staff.

In the future, it's not hard to imagine Spot-esque robots locating lost hikers on treacherous trails or assisting in the disposal of hazardous materials.

Project Loon

Around the world, 4.3 billion people lack a reliable Internet connection.

What if relatively low-cost, inflatable balloons were able to get large numbers of these people, many of whom live in remote areas, online?

That's the project Google engineers have been working on since 2012, when the company mysteriously launched test balloons fitted with rudimentary technology over California.

Since then, Google X engineers have named the program and developed more advanced balloons that have traversed the world. Loon balloons are cheaper to build and operate than satellite systems.

To potentially get billions of people online, Google has designed a fleet of inflatable balloons that contain electronics powered by solar panels inside the balloons.

Each balloon covers a 40-km diameter and is able to catch an Internet transmission from the ground and relay it to remote users.

Flying 20 kilometers above the stratosphere, much higher than commercial airplanes, Loon balloons connect through radio networks to existing telecommunication networks to deliver high-speed Internet coverage to devices that might be out-of-reach without the balloons, which can provide a stable connection to a diameter of roughly 40 km.

Google has created algorithms that calculate where to place its balloons in the stratosphere, so they can move with the wind. Engineers are able to track the aircraft using GPS.

So far, Loon balloons have worked in conjunction with major telecom providers in Brazil, New Zealand and Australia.

Whereas the first test balloons only stayed in the sky for a few days, today they’re able to float for more than 100 days and circumnavigate the globe.

Project Loon balloon nearing launch at a test site outside of Christchurch, New Zealand.

The Omniprocessor

Since stepping down as Microsoft's CEO in 2000, Bill Gates has gradually transitioned to full-time philanthropy work at his and his wife Melinda’s charity, The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which last year made nearly $4 billion in grant payments.

Gates-funded projects, like the man they're partly named after, are rarely conventional solutions.

Instead, they tend to be ingenious elixirs for vexing problems, like enhanced design to increase condom use, pre-vaccinated cows that smell like humans to attract mosquitos and remote monitoring to prevent vaccine spoilage.

Gates’ newest commission, a machine that turns sewage into clean water, aligns with that trend.

The Omniprocessor, as the machine is called, was designed and built by Janicki Bioenergy. It starts by ingesting sludge and boiling it, separating the water vapor from the solids, which are fed into a fire and turned into steam that powers the processor and provides excess electricity to communities.

Where does clean drinking water come out of this technological behemoth?

The Omniprocessor filters the water vapor created in the boiling process through a cleaning system that pumps out clean drinking water.

Why not build sewage systems? In the developing world, those are costly and energy inefficient, if present at all.

The result is waste that’s trucked to oceans, burned using natural gas or directed into water supplies. Nearly 700,000 children die every year from diseases caused by poor sanitation.

The Omniprocessor, which is currently undergoing a test run in Senegal, will eventually handle waste from 100,000 people and turn it into 86,000 liters of clean drinking water and 25 kilowatts of net electricity a day, the Gates Foundation expects.